Vendor lineage
Tempest - cybersecurity out of Recife
Brazil's largest specialist security firm, built outside the Sao Paulo axis and bought by an aircraft manufacturer.
Tempest is a Brazilian cybersecurity company founded and headquartered in Recife, with offices in Sao Paulo and London. Its portfolio spans consulting, managed security services, security software integration and identity protection, and roughly half its client base sits in the financial sector - the industry that funds security work first and most consistently.
Two things make the trajectory worth recording. It grew from about R$20m to R$120m in revenue across four years, and it did so from Recife rather than Sao Paulo - a genuine counterexample to the assumption that Brazilian technology is a Sao Paulo story, and one that matters to anybody deciding where a career can be built.
The ownership is the other half. Embraer took a 37% indirect stake in 2016 through FIP Aeroespacial, a venture fund whose principal holders are Embraer and the BNDES, and later acquired control. That an aircraft manufacturer and a state development bank ended up owning the country's largest security specialist says more about how Brazilian technology is capitalised than any number of funding rounds would.
Tempest acquired EZ-Security in 2018, which is the transaction that made it the largest specialist in the country by consolidation rather than by growth alone.
- Baguete, 1 July 2020 - Embraer takes control of Tempest; Embraer held 37% indirectly after a R$28.2m investment in 2016 via FIP Aeroespacial (Embraer and BNDES principal holders); revenue R$20m to R$120m; 300 staff in Recife, Sao Paulo and London; CEO and co-founder Cristiano Lincoln Mattos
- Tempest - company site
- Tempest’s own history page states that the company was born in the year 2000 as a startup incubated at a university centre. A separate company described on the same page was founded in 1999; only the 2000 statement refers to Tempest itself